Singur slogans forgotten as Mamata needs to acquire land to drive Rlys

NEW DELHI: The party activist in Mamata Banerjee seems to have given in to Mamata Banerjee, the minister. The Trinamool Congress chief, who also holds the important portfolio of Railways in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh���s Cabinet, calibrated her position on the contentious issue of land acquisition saying that she was not opposed to the policy per se, but only objected to the West Bengal model of acquisition.

The Bengal leader, who has been waging a political battle against land acquisition, sees no conflict while acquiring land for the railways. ���It is different. We don���t need huge tracks of land. We require narrow stretches,��� the railway minister said. Elucidating her point, Ms Banerjee said that when railways acquires land it is not a 1,000 or 5,000 acres in one place, but narrow stretches ���just enough for the tracks���.

The railway minister said her party would be submitting its views on the Rehabilitation Act and the Land Acquisiton Act to the ministry of rural development. The Trinamool Congress had not been consulted as her party was not part of the government earlier. It is unlikely that Ms Banerjee will have an ideological problem, as the suggested amendments seek to cap the state���s role in acquiring land to 30% ��� a change that was suggested in the law in the aftermath of the Singur agitation. For her part, Ms Banerjee does not oppose acquisition of land by industry. Her objection is only to the forcible acquisition by the government.

Not wanting to be seen to betray her ���pro-poor, pro-farmer��� stance, Ms Banerjee said commercial utilisation of land by the railways was something she had initiated in her earlier stint.

As a political activist in Bengal, Ms Banerjee could have taken up the rights of squatters, but as railway minister, Ms Banerjee can ill afford to advocate the cause of squatters. In reference to encroachers on railway land meant for extending the Kolkata Metro, she said she is ���not in support of illegal encroachment���.